Everything I Had
by Auua Ytjoml
Summary: "Don't you dare tell me everything was a lie. Don't you dare pretend that you weren't the idiot I know you were. I don't know who you think you are, but the past was real. You were real." (AU from 5x12 No Slash)
1. After Destiny is Done

**A/N: So this is a new writing style for me. Much more abrupt than I'm used to but it really fit with how Merlin was experiencing the world. I hope you like it! And if any of you are also reading Down at the Tavern, I apologize for the delay. I've got the next three chapters completely written except for this one scene that's crucial to the development of the reveal. Unfortunately it is also in the next chapter so you guys have been left hanging. **

He opened his eyes and saw the world for the first time.

The sun was shining on those who cared about him.

The darkness was coming to an end, and the clouds cleared.

He saw life, and the beauty of nature.

He saw the new beginning.

_New Beginning – Josh Abbot_

Empty. Not just inside his own soul but in every corner of the very world. He's never known anything so cold, so bitter.

She'd tricked him. He knows he should have expected it, been more prepared, more alert, stronger, something, but he can't find it in himself to take the blame. So much rests on his shoulders. So much blood on his hands. He can't take this as well. It's too much.

He cannot feel their power, but he knows that somewhere up ahead is the crystal cavern. Time passes. He doesn't move. It doesn't matter. Destiny can not be fought. Hadn't he learned that already? So why should he bother? Mordred will kill Arthur. Magic will return to the land. He'd protected his King until the end. Wasn't that enough? He'd given everything. Wasn't everything _enough_?

He grows hungry. Eventually the hunger stops. He realizes that it's been too long. He's been to long. Arthur needs him. With one thought he drags himself forward, stumbling and crawling over the sharp rock.

It doesn't hurt. He doesn't know if anything _can_ hurt anymore. No. That's not true. He doesn't feel the wounds that must be the source of the blood he sees dripping down on to the earthen floor with dusty splatters. He doesn't feel the ache inside that he knows he should feel considering he can't have eaten in days. But he feels the pain. He'd failed. He'd failed.

He'd failed.

The glowing crystals poking out of ground in front of his face are trying to tell him something. He doesn't know how he knows this. How could mere rocks tell him anything? Nevertheless it is a persistent hallucination so he opens his eyes.

_The blond king falls and it feels as though time should slow down to give everyone a few precious moments to comprehend the death of someone so monumental, but if anything time speeds up. The battle blurs. The white dragon screams and falls upon the king carrying him high into the sky. The dark haired witch calls for it. The dragon disappears. _

He turns away. Battles do not interest him. They scare him. He'd lost someone in battle once. Someone who'd meant more than the world to him. But the name slips through his grasp and he closes his eyes.

The next time he opens them he seems to have moved. This time he cannot avoid the crystals.

_The white dragon lands its tortured body on the shores of a island hidden in mist. Its burden falls gently from its grasp onto the stone table. It doesn't know why it does this but it feels the pull of destiny-_

NO! No, no destiny. No glorious endings. He considers fighting to end the visions and decides against it. The effort isn't worth it.

_Merlin Emrys. Son of Balinor son of Ambrosius descendent from Myrddin first brother of dragonkind, awakener of Aithusa, enstater of the Lady of the Lake, builder of Albion, protector of the Once and Future King, child of Magic… Your destiny needs you._

The voice brings to mind a small white dragon the size of a horse and a dank cave filled with magic and wrong choices.

No. I am done.

_Not even the fates can force you into this sacrifice. The decision is hard but make it you must. Yeah or nea, your answer must be given. _

Their insistence tires him. What do you want from me?

_Your king is dying. How would you restore the balance of the world? Would you allow Albion and all the rest to fall? Or would you sacrifice your Magic to restore your King?_

He shakes his head. My magic is gone.

_What do you say?_

I would.

With a sigh he slips away into nothing at all, the world trembles and the eyes of Emrys close for forever.

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The next time he wakes he is lying on something soft and elevated. He doesn't understand. The cave is all he remembers. The crystals. He turns his head away from the wind, blinded by whatever shines upon him from that direction. The crystals had never glowed this brightly. His ears pick up the sound of something dripping and he wonders if he's bleeding again.

He blinks rapidly as his darkened eyes adjust to the newly discovered brilliance. He sees a square hole in the wall – _a window_ – his mind supplies. The dripping comes from there. _Rain._

_Sun. _

Curious he lifts his head slightly in attempt to catch better sight of the millions of liquid diamonds clinging to every surface. Farther above him than he could ever have imagined a blue ceiling stretches across the world. _Sky_.

Scared suddenly, of the bigness suggested by that word, he turns back to the lower ceiling above him. In one corner something hangs weaving delicate strands of grey fiber. _Spider_. _Web_.

Footsteps that are not his own thud against the hollow floor outside this room. _Wooden steps_, his mind supplies. _A visitor_.

The -_door-_ opens and then a voice calls out from somewhere below. It closes again. His curiosity peaks mutely. Should he attempt to follow? He slides out from under the rough blanket and pads softly across the wooden boards. Another door slams in the next room. He enters.

The crystal catches his attention first. It is polished and tied to a handle with twine. Not one of his crystals. Next to it is a-_a book. To be read. About herbs or magic or perhaps armor. You have read books before._ He wonders if he still can but his eyes move on, traveling over glass jars filled with powders and medicines. He knows what each one does and how to prepare it. That he doesn't remember the source of his knowledge doesn't bother him. It doesn't occur to him to fear it.

Across the room and out the second door. He stuffs his hands behind his back. The world is already too bright, to colorful and full of sounds and smells that he knows and does not know. It is overwhelming.

In the hallways he passes others. They stop and stare at him. Some smile. Some are afraid. He wonders why but does not ask. He is going somewhere important. They do not matter.

His feet know the path like his eyes had known the sun and the spider. It is a knowledge beyond his ability to remember, meaning that it is knowledge of the world beyond the cave. He wonders briefly why the crystals had given him this knowledge and then wonders why it matters.

His feet take him to the entrance of another room. He pushes open one of the ornate double doors without knocking. If asked he wouldn't have remembered why he should knock. If he had remembered he wouldn't have knocked anyways. The action alerts the person inside to his presence. They stand.

At first the man simply looks at him and he stares back. The other man is tall and well muscled, though not quite as tall as himself. His blond hair and blue eyes complete a framework in his mind. A face connects with a name slipping around the perimeter of crystalline thoughts.

"Arthur. You are Arthur."

They are the first words he's spoken since he can remember. His tongue feels encumbered by the syllables. His throat vibrates uneasily with the sound.

Arthur doesn't move but he smiles. "Thank you."

He doesn't understand what those words mean. He says as much. The crystals try to tell him something but his unease closes off the natural flow of information.

Arthur fills in for him instead. "It means that I know now, Merlin. It means that you don't have to hide ever again."

Somehow he realizes that he's not been given a definition of unfamiliar vocabulary but rather an explanation. A gift.

He apologizes. "I don't know you. I don't know what that means."

Arthur frowns and that is a much more comfortable communication. "Are you allright?"

More words. "I- I don't know."

He looks down to see if the answers come to him any more easily when he's not matching gazes with Arthur's knowing eyes.

"Merlin?"

He looks out the window. He doesn't know what to do next. The crystals are silent for now.

"Ah- Emrys?"

There it is again. The source of his uncomfortableness. He shakes his head.

"No. I am not Emrys." The crystals chime from somewhere in the distance and the echo resonates within his skull. He learns more. _Tell Arthur._ He tries. "Emrys is dead. He… restored the world? Balance. A life for a life. Magic for King…. but what king?"

The last question he asks directly of Arthur. The blue eyes close as if the soul behind them is trying to hide.

"You don't really remember any of this, do you Merlin?"

Finally. A question he can answer without doubt. "No."

Arthur nods, once shakily, twice firmly. "Allright. Allright. That's ok."

A faintly remembered pull urges him to comfort the man. The urge is remembered without the crystals this time and somehow that makes it more real, more true.

"I- If you want to you can tell me. That way I would remember."

Arthur shakes his head. "Gaius said you should be allowed to remember on your own."

Merlin shrugs. "I don't think it matters. I don't think I'm supposed remember what Emrys did."

This time Arthur moves to grip his arms. "But it does matter." The emotion in the man's voice catches Merlin off guard. "It wasn't just Emrys who saved me from my enemies and myself alike. It wasn't just Emrys who befriended the entirety of Camelot. It wasn't just destiny. It was Merlin too."

Arthur's conviction stirs something within him. A brief displacement of colors and words sends a scene blossoming across his senses.

_A bright crowded square. Arthur standing in front of him ringed by knights. _

"_I'd never have a friend who could be such an ass."_

_The bedroom. Arthur angrily turning on him. "Who are you to tell me what I'm thinking?"_

_His own reply. "I'm your friend." _

The present replaces what he can only assume was the past. He shakes his head again. "No. Merlin died long before Emrys did." Of that he is certain.

Angrily, Arthur denies this and demands proof that he cannot give. "You are Merlin. Magic or no magic. Don't you dare tell me everything was a lie. Don't you dare pretend that you weren't the idiot I know you were. I don't know what happened during the battle. I don't know who you think you are now, but the past was real. You were real."

The impassioned argument elicits no response. Merlin is numb. He feels as if his soul doesn't really belong here, or as if he had been torn away from his moorings and left to drift on a calm sea. He wants to say that he doesn't _know_ anything, but that's not really what he means. He may not be able to find the wound but something is missing and without it he feels like an amputee, stranger in his own body. You were real, Arthur insists.

"Was I?"

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	2. Life Begins Anew

"I told you. You don't love someone because of [destiny or fate or even duty]. You love them because they sing a song only your heart can understand."

_― L.J. Smith_

They stand there like two planets left stranded amidst the stars after their own sun vanishes.

Finally Arthur speaks. His tone is earnest and his volume is low but the words carry across the room clearly and easily. The words fall from his mind as truths, Merlin can tell that much. Arthur is not trying to convince himself and this comforts Merlin. Arthur's conviction is not enough anymore but it helps. It helps.

"Merlin did exist. He's existed from the beginning and he always will. You were a young boy who was afraid of his magic and wondered if he was a monster. Destiny would not have thought such unhelpful thoughts. You were an idiot who could never do things properly because he was too busy trying to do what was right. That's why you saved Mordred and Morgana and Uther and a hundred others. Not because they would help your destiny. Not because protecting me would be easier if they were alive. Because you, _Mer_lin, could never let the fates rule your heart."

Merlin trembles. "I did though. I did. I don't- I can't-"

He can almost feel where his memories should be. In their place crystalline branches of light cut and sear anything that comes too close. Only fragments escape.

"_What happened to the young boy who came into my chambers just a few years ago?" _

"-So you've grown up. Everyone does. Maybe you're a darker person than you were. Maybe you have fears that can't be stilled and wounds that can't be healed. But you are still as you have always been.-"

The crystal fissures and suddenly he does care. He desperately wants the answer to that question, _what happened…?_ Who was he? Where had that part of him gone? The part of him that asked "what can I do next?" instead of "Haven't I given enough?" The part of him that knew what compassion meant and thank you and honor. The part of him to whom duty wasn't an unbreakable code and survival wasn't the ultimate goal. Where was the part of him who _cared_?

Arthur can see the change in his friend's eyes. He can read the questions in his face and he does his best to answer them. "You're an idiot and a brave one. You are the most courageous man I know, not for saving my life so many times but for risking it when doing so mattered most. The fates of the world may have created Emrys and the Once and Future King, but the legends could not stand alone. They were born inside two people who became friends despite destiny. You didn't need to insult me to protect me. You didn't need to care to fulfill your destiny."

Merlin's eyes slip shut. His hands curl into balls at his side and his trembling escalates. Arthur wraps his arms around him and Merlin can't decide whether to lean into the contact or tear himself away from the extra sensation it brings. Arthur continues.

"You didn't need to care but you did. Too much sometimes. That's what makes you Merlin. That is why I remember you as my closest friend. Because you care."

He remembers the cave. That he can remember without interference. Those memories are embedded in the crystal, impossible to tear away and impossible to shatter.

Eyes still tightly shut he reads his memories aloud. "I'd given up. I thought it was just because of my magic, because it was gone but it wasn't that. I'd given up long before Morgana's last trick. Since before the Disir I think. I don't know what happened. I was so tired of it all. And in the end I thought I'd given you everything, but I was wrong. I hadn't given you that part of me. I'd lost it all on my own."

The arms around him shift and he feels rather than sees one of Arthur's hands lift and tilt his head.

"Open your eyes Merlin. That's an order."

He obeys.

"Look at me." Arthur's face is set sternly yet he can see beyond the frown and tilted eyebrows to the concern and friendship and respect that this man holds for him.

"Losing yourself was not your fault. If anything I would place the blame squarely on destiny itself, but it was really all of us. Everyone who attacked and forced you to defend in secret, everyone who didn't know your secret and didn't support you. Everyone who depended on you without even knowing it. No man can stand alone Merlin."

"If that's all it is then why do I feel so distant?"

Arthur shrugs in way that tells him he's given it a lot of thought. "Our destiny has been fulfilled right? Maybe Emrys and the King are gone. Maybe we're not connected by forces beyond our choosing anymore. Maybe now we can just be Merlin and Arthur."

"Start over?" The idea sounds painfully difficult and Merlin almost can't breath at the thought of trying to erase all the pain he doesn't quite remember. How could they possible go back to being who they'd been before everything?

Arthur cuts through his rising panic with one swift gesture of execution.

"More like a new beginning."

"I don't know how to do anything other than follow my destiny. It's all I've ever done."

Arthur hums and then releases his friend to turn away. He picks up something from the table and walks slowly back to the center of the room.

"I hadn't told you yet. Gwen is expecting."

The thought strikes through the crystalline parts of his mind as wrong. Gwen can't be pregnant. That wasn't what was going to happen. He'd seen it. It was impossible.

Arthur holds out a ring engraved with the dragon of Camelot. "I was wondering if you would accept the honor of being the princess' Godfather or if I'd have to make it an order."

"A new beginning." Merlin repeats to himself. The memories are still fragmented but somehow he knows that the man in front of him speaks the truth. More than that he knows now that the crystals in his mind, echoes of a distant cave, are merely conduits. Whatever the mechanism of the visions they produced, the system was flawed. Destiny was not the end. "What will you call her?"

"I was thinking of naming her after an old friend. Morgan."

Destiny had claimed so many lives yet the destination it prophesized was not set in stone. Destiny could be wrong.

"I think that the girl who fought Uther's hatred and rode beside us into Ealdor would have liked that."

And maybe Emrys was what was wrong with him. Maybe destiny had been his crutch and aid so that he limped now that it was gone. A life for a life. Emrys for Arthur. He can feel it inside him, the magic, but it's small and it doesn't feel like the wellspring that had comforted and given him purpose. Instead it feels like the earth and the air and castle stones.

"I wonder what one calls a warlock who no longer has magic of his own? A sorcerer?"

Arthur huffs laughingly and ruffles his hair. "Nah. Do you know how many weeks I've spent convincing the council that you're not a sorcerer? You can't change that now."

Merlin looks around startled. "I wasn't asking you. I mean- Sorry, I was speaking aloud, I didn't-"

Arthur shoots him a teasing glare that is only partially faked. "Don't start apologizing on me _Mer_lin. I couldn't stand it. And if you're concerned about labels-" and here he waves his hand to show that he certainly shouldn't be, "-then just make one up. Like warcer, wiser, wiserld-"

"Wizard."

Arthur smiles. "Yes, that's it. You can be a wizard. A one of a kind. Now what do you say to my daughter? Would you protect her from a dollophead like me?"

Merlin grins softly. The memories aren't clear in the details but he doesn't think he needs them to tell him where to go from here.

"Only if you can protect her from an idiot like me."

Arthur smiles and he knows he said the right thing.

"_Mer_lin."

With a wave of his hand Arthur gestures to his friend to join him where he stands by the windows.

"Look Merlin."

Following Arthur's direction Merlin allows his eyes to drift over the tightly clustered straw or shale thatched roofs of the lower town. In the courtyard below, two knights tussle good-naturedly to the appreciation of a gaggle of young women clustered at the small market set up along the opposite wall. Beyond the city walls summer's green fields roll gently into the distance studded with small farmsteads. A few of the closest villages are just visible at the edge of his sight and of course there's the forest dipping close to the citidel and then receding into the distance to create a wild green border around the Camelot valley. Across the landscape a pale river of dampened dust marks the road, thick with traders and travelers including a few small clusters of cloaked druids.

"This is what we fought for Merlin. This is why we tortured ourselves with what ifs and brutal training, and awful choices. To create a world of peace and prosperity. To create a world where our children will have a better life than we did."

Looking out across the lands and the people that he had, in his own way, also claimed as his, Merlin cannot help but agree. They had created something wonderful, a true Golden Age, and they hadn't need destiny to do it. They'd done it themselves with loyalty, bravery, trust, mercy, love. From this rich soil they had cultivated a land he was proud to call his own.

And wasn't everything he had worth it after all? For this?

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**So what do you think? Good, bad, ugly? Please tell me!**


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